The Constitutional Market-Place

Published:Vperyod, No. 16, April 30 (17), 1905. Signed: K#8212;v.

      Published according to the text inVperyod.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1962,

      Moscow,Volume 8,

      pages351-355.Translated:Bernard Isaacs and The Late Isidor LaskerTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Bulygin,as the St. Petersburg aristocratic circles justly remark, is now
playing for time. He is trying to postpone the reforms promised by the tsar as
long as possible, and to reduce them to trifles that will in no way diminish the
power of the autocratic tsar and of autocratic officialdom. In place of a
constitution, he is preparing, as we pointed out once before inVperyod,[1]a consultative body enjoying no rights whatever. Now we have
confirmation of what we said, namely, the text of Bulygin’s project published
in the German liberal newspaperVossische Zeitung.According to that
news paper, Bulygin, Yermolov, Shcherbatov, Meshchersky, Count Sheremetyev, and
Prince Urusov have been mentioned as authors of the project, which in substance
is as follows:

Forthe discussion (no more than that!) and the drafting of all bills, two
bodies shall be set up: (1) a State Council, and (2) a State Assembly. Bills may
be introduced by any member of the State Council or by no fewer than twenty
members of the Assembly. Bills are discussed and passed by the Assembly, after
which they go to the Council and finallyto the tsar for his approval.The tsar decides the form in which bills shall become law, or he vetoes them
altogether.

Thus,the Bulygin “constitution” does not limit the autocratic
regime at all but merely introduces two exclusively consultative bodies: an
Upper House and a Lower House! The Upper House, or State Council, is
to consist of 60 members elected by the Assemblies of the Nobles of 60 gubernias
(including the Polish gubernias), as well as of members appointed by the tsar
from among the officials andofficers. The total number of members is not to exceed 120. The term of office
      of the elected members is three years. The sessions of the Council may be
      open to the public or closed, at the discretion of the Council.

TheLower House, or State Assembly, is to consist of elective members only
(Ministers and heads of departments may sitex officioin both Houses),
namely: 10 representatives from each of the 34 Zemstvo gubernias (a total of
340); 8 representatives from each of the three gubernias having Zemstvo
institutions but no institutions of the nobility (a total of 24); 8 from each
of the nine North-Western gubernias (72); 5 from each of the 10 Polish gubernias
(50); 5 from each of the three Baltic gubernias (15); 30 from Siberia; 30 from
the Caucasus; 15 from Central Asia and the Transcaspian region; 32 from Finland;
20 from the big cities (St. Petersburg, 6; Moscow, 5; Warsaw, 3; Odessa, 2;
Lodz, Kiev, Riga, and Kliarkov, I each); 10 from the Greek Orthodox clergy; I
each from the Catholics, Lutherans, Armenians, Mohammedans, and Jews. That makes
a total of 643 members. This Assembly is to elect an Executive Committee
consisting of a chairman, two vice-chairmen, and 15 members. Their term of
office will be three years. The Executive Committee is to be a permanent
institution; the Assembly is to meet only twice a year: February-March and
October-November. The sessions may be open or closed at the discretion of the
Assembly. During their term of office the members of the Assembly will enjoy
personal immunity. Only Russian subjects not under 25 years of age, with the
ability to read and write Russian, will be eligible. They will receive a salary
of 3,000 rubles a year.

Electionsshall be held as follows: in each of the 34 Zemstvo gubernias, two
members will be elected by the Assembly of the Nobles, three by the gubernia
Zemstvo Assembly, one from the towns through special electors, three from the
peasants through special electors, and one from the merchants, also through
electors. The deputies from the non-Zemstvo gubernias are to be elected on a
similar basis; we shall not enumerate all these absurd bureaucratic and police
institutions. To illustrate the proposed method of indirect election, we shall
instance the procedure for the election of peasant representatives in the
Zemstvo gubernias,

Everyvolost elects three electors. These meet at the uyezd centre, theMarshal of the Nobility presiding(!), and choose three electors of the
second degree. These electors meet at the gubernia capital, the gubernia Marshal
of the Nobility presiding, and elect the three representatives of the
peasantry, who must themselves be peasants. Thus the elections go
through three stages!

Mr.Bulygin does not work at all badly. He gets his salary from the tsar for
services rendered. His constitution, as the reader can see, is a downright
travesty of popular representation. The power of the autocracy, as we have
shown, is not in the least restricted. Both Houses are purely consultative,
while the tsar alone has the power to decide. The whole thing is simply a fine
promise never meant to be kept. In the first place, it is a
“representation” specifically of thenobility, of thelandlords.The nobility has half the votes in the Upper House and close
to half in the Lower (of the ten representatives from each Zemstvo gubernia,
two are from the nobility direct and three from the Zemstvo Assemblies, which
to all intents and purposes are assemblies of the nobility). The participation
of the peasants in the elections is ludicrously remote. The three-stage system
of elections makes sure that the common people are thoroughly sifted out before
they get to the Assembly.

Inthe second place, one is struck by thecomplete exclusion of the
workers.Representation in this sheep’s parliament is based entirely on
the social-estate principle. There is no workers’ “estate”, and
there cannot be. In the case of the townsfolk and the merchants, the elections
are so manipulated that only the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie filter
through the various gradations of electors, and it is extremely illuminating to
see how this bourgeoisie is pushed well into the background as compared with the
nobility. The tsar’s servants, it seems, do not much fear landlord liberalism;
they are shrewd enough to perceive under this veneer of liberalism the
profoundly conservative
social nature of “The Wild Gentleman”.[2]

Itwould be serving a very useful purpose to make Bulygin’s constitution widely
known among the workers and the peasants. One could hardly show up more plainly
the real aspirations and the class basis of the tsarist power whichis supposed to stand above the classes. One could hardly conceive of better
      material for object lessons in universal, direct, and equal suffrage by
      secret ballot.

Itis interesting also to view this skimpy “constitution” of
landlords and bureaucrats in the light of the latest reports on the Russian
political parties. Except for the extreme parties, the terrorists and the
reactionaries, a certain English correspondent (who evidently mixes in
“society” and therefore does not see common people such as the
workers) counts three parties: (1) the conservative, or pan-Slavic, party (the
“Slavophil” system: to the tsar, the power of authority; to his
subjects, the power of opinion, viz., a representative assembly with
consultative powers only); (2) the liberal, or “opportunist”, party
(its leader, Shipov; its programme— like that of all opportunists—-
“between two stools”); and (3) the radical,or(a very
characteristic “or”!) constitutional party, which includes most of the
Zemstvo people, professors “and students” (?). Its programme:
universal suffrage by secret ballot.

Theconservatives are said to be meeting now in St. Petersburg, the liberals
will meet at the beginning of May in Moscow, and the radicals at the same time
in St. Petersburg. Government circles are said to regard universal suffrage by
secret ballot as equivalent to“the proclamation of the
republic”.The “radicals” are the most numerous of all
the parties.

Bulygin’sproject is, to all appearances, the project of the conservative
party. The project of theOsvobozhdeniyecamp is very similar to the
programme of the “radical or constitutional” party (in reality, not
at all radical and but poorly constitutional). Finally, the
“liberal”, or Shipov, party probably wants a little more than is
offered by Bulygin and a little less than is demanded by the
constitutionalists.

Themarket-place is having a great day .The bargaining is brisk. The fine
gentlemen of society are standing out for a high price and so are the cunning
gentlemen of the Court. Everything points to the two of them knocking a bit off
and then—striking a bargain,before the workers and peasants step in.

Thegovernment is playing a deep game. It threatens the conservatives with the
liberals; it threatens the liberalswith theOsvobozhdeniye“radicals”; it threatens
the last-named with the spectre of a republic. Translated into the
language of class
interests, particularly of the chief interest— exploitation of the
workers by the bourgeoisie— this game means: Let us come to terms, my dear
landlords and merchants; let us divide the power peaceably, in bonds of harmony,
before it is too late, before the real popular revolution sets in, before we
have the rising of the whole proletariat and the whole peasantry, who will not
swallow skimpy constitutions, indirect elections, or any other bureaucratic
rubbish.

Theclass-conscious proletariat must have no illusions. The only pledge of
Russia’s real emancipation from the entire serf-holding, absolutist system lies
in it alone, in the proletariat supported by the peasantry, in the armed
uprising of the two, in their desperate struggle under the slogan of
“Death or freedom”.

[1]See p. 273 of this volume.—Ed.

[2]The Wild Gentleman—acharacter in
Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy-tale under the same title.